In the early days of the Pioneer Pass Challenge, players walked or rode horseback the entire 27 miles, but today there us transportation from hole to hole by truck. The "cup" on the 10 Pioneer Pass holes is a 20-foot circle, but to reach it players must shoot over and around sagebrush, Joshua trees, rocks and even a snake or two. Play runs past Rimrock, through Pioneertown and the Russ Hayden Western Museum en route to the final hole at the Blue Shies course.
It lies in a tranquil valley of more than 13,000 acres, ringed by sawtooth mountains, some 22 miles from Big Bear Lake. The surroundings are shrouded in both fact and fantasy, with names like Deadman’s Dry Lake, Old Woman Springs, Duncan Flats, Black Lava Butte and Devil’s Garden.
The festival will feature an art show, chuckwagon dinner, Western dancing, mini-rodeo, several Western melodramas and related Western activities for artists, art patrons, families and the general public.
Pioneertown residents can't agree whether to cling to their backwater identity or court the entertainment industry, which built and then forgot the high desert town.